Traffic (Complete two-hundred pages) (Moving to Kindle Vella in 30 Days! )

Traffic Novel 3

1

CRASH

THE CRASH WAS LESS THAN A MILLISECOND in his memory before he woke and the curtain of white opened to reveal a red shore against an ocean of debris and Penelope dead under the caved-in windshield. He moved his hand toward her but could not reach as the pain surged up his decrepit spine. All he could think about at that moment was:

I should have rented driverless.

The tears plugged his vision, and he was pulled from the driver's seat and taken into the ambulance. A beautiful nurse spoke to him from behind the ringing in his ears, but he didn't look at her, he was looking for Penelope.

"Am I going to be okay?" he mouthed.

He must have said it, but he could only feel the acoustics rumble within the chamber of his sinuses. He could hear nothing but the echoes of the crash. And the piercing scream from before he woke in the car.

"I have a daughter," he said. The nurse touched his left leg, and that's when he realized he could not feel it. The nurse looked at him and pushed his hair out of his face because he would not do it himself.

"You'll be okay," she seemed to say.

But he didn't acknowledge this. Life was not fair at this moment. And he shook his head wondering about the future, and how it would have been, if he had listened to Penelope and just. bought. the driverless.

The ambulance ride was less than therapeutic. They took his blood pressure and checked his vitals and replenished him with fresh bodily fluids.

The whole time he just lay on his back, his eyes open. The ceiling looked nice. Nice and clean. Like someone regularly scrubbed the corners and swiffered the edges of the ambulance. In a way the square ceiling resembled heaven. And as the ambulance drove closer and closer on to the hospital, the ceiling seemed to lower, and cave in on him. Any second it would collapse and a wave of locusts bleeding at the mouths would swarm down on him, and push him through the belly of the ambulance and burst him into the passing road below.

2

HOSPITAL

THEY ARRIVED AT THE HOSPITAL. And he lay in his bed. The nurse left him and he was alone. But not for long. In a day, the nurse returned with a message. A man was there to see him.

Pat.

"Hey buddy," Pat said. Holding a stack of books. "Thought you might want some entertainment written in English. . ." Pat's head lifted when he spotted the television hanging up on the ceiling. Channel 2 Televisa. ". . . because you can't speak Spanish all too well."

The patient nodded. His guest had a point. He had no clue what was going on the television. He had meant to grab for the remote a minute ago but it slipped off his knee and the batteries spilled out on the floor. His fractured leg made it impossible to move, lest he bleed again.

"The boss wants us to go now," the visitor said, playing with a lopsided pink balloon that was too inflated on one edge to be a heart. "Who gave you this?"

The patient was hardly listening. He was too busy trying to learn Spanish. But perhaps he'd answer the visitor's question. "The nurse gave it to me."

The visitor took off his fedora in a sardonic display of respect. "The knockout at the front desk?" He popped out a smolder to the patient, walked over and slapped him on the shoulder. It was truly painful. "You sly dog. Have you made your move?"

The patient turned a brow to him. "I was just in a car crash."

"Right. That reminds me. How's your wife?" This question triggered a heat wave across the patient's body. A fire in him burned and he felt the chains of fate tighten around his stomach. He lay motionless. Merely let his head sink deeper into his hard pillow.